Season's Greetings!!! Painting and Gaming Update...

Hi folks. I hope that you are all enjoying your Christmas celebrations and that Santa brought you some cool gifts.

I have been busy over the past few weeks painting Lord of the Rings models, having been inspired by the latest Hobbit film. I know lots of people think the movie is a steaming pile of dingo kidneys, but I loved it! Anyway, I have been busy with completing some High Elf spearmen converted from Guards of the Galadhrim Court. They have been painted in my current 'dip & highlight' style. I like them - they aren't the best GW sculpts, but I think my paint job and the addition of shields has made them look pretty cool...

I have also been working on my evil forces as well, prompted by a chance encounter on EBAY. I had been worrying for a while about the amount of time it is going to take to get enough LoTR models on the table for a game when, quite by chance, I came upon 24 painted Morannon Orcs. They were not cheap, but had been painted in a fairly neat base coat, ink wash and dry brush style. Anyway, I took the chance and clicked 'Buy it Now.' 

This is what they looked like when they arrived...

So, I set to work adding proper highlights and tidying up areas where the dry brushing was dodgy. I also repainted the shields black, Dullcoted and rebased to match the Orcs I had already done. Here are a couple of close-ups after the surgery was completed...

Not too shabby, I think you'll agree!! I have 8 more to do by which time my Orc force will have quadrupled in about 4 evenings painting time...result!!!!

Here are a few 'action shots' of the entire LoTR collection thus far...

Finally for today, just before Christmas, Andy Mac and I reconvened for another play test of the War & Conquest Romano-British and Early Saxon army lists. This time we took 2500pt armies which gave me the chance to try armoured milites and Frankish allies. The game was, as always, a cracker. However, it did expose the fact that well armoured Romano-Brits are pretty well certain to grind out a win against the Saxon Duguth simply by virtue of better saving throws and by being close order infantry. This means they need to be limited in Romano-Brit lists. in fact, I am toying with the idea of forcing the Romano-Brit player to field at least one unit of Pedyt in any army list above 1500pts. The Franks were, predictably, slaughtered when facing foot Gedriht. The KA4 of the Gedriht means that they are invincible in a straight fight (although Welsh Teulu will be their equal when I write their list) and in this game, Andy's unit strolled through the Franks and one unarmoured milites unit. His mounted Gedriht came off distinctly worse against the mounted Romano-Brit Commanipulares, helped by the Equites, whose flank charge was a joy!!

Overall, we had to stop due to running out of time. Andy had killed 2 of my combat units, but I had killed more. However, he achieved his objective whereas I did not. Next, we will use different forces - Andy will try some Geoguth in his army and I will field a Vortigern list with Saxon mercenaries and Pedyt...

Anyway, a few pictures...

Saxon deployment...

Battle lines formed...

View from the other table edge...

View from behind the Saxon horde...

Gedriht showing my Franks how it should be done...ouch...

Arthur charges in...

Chop, slice, stab...

Andy ponders the pending destruction of his mounted Gedriht...

Saxon Duguth about to 'take their medicine' courtesy of Arthur's commanipulares...

I hope you enjoyed the update. Next up, more Elves and orcs, plus news of 2015's big War & Conquest project!

New Painting

Just a quick update with some painting. These models have been painted for a couple of online 'competitions', one on Lead Adventure forum and one on The One Ring  .

Firstly two Foundry British Colonial officers from their Darkest Africa range that I will use with the Empress British infantry I painted for the NW Frontier a couple of years ago...

Next, my conversion of a LOTR Galadhrim guard. He has been painted as a High Elf elite spearman for my LOTR force which will eventually be used for Saga and a Fantasy version of Dux Brit (hopefully!) as well as games of LOTR with my son.

The three Last of the Mohicans characters just need their bases finishing and then I need to highlight up the other 5 Elves and a bunch of NW Frontier Sikhs that have been dipped. So, progress at last!! Gaming updates when I have a bit longer to write the text and upload some photos from my phone...

More Middle Earth Stuff...HILL TROLL!!!!

This is a such a bloody great model!! Despite GW's issues, they do make some lovely stuff and this troll just OOZES character! It'll be a centrepiece of my Fantasy Dux  Evil army. I even painted it just like the GW scheme, simply cos I love the combo of browns....

The painting table currently contains a Saxon standard bearer and a bunch of GW LOTR Orcs... Progress hopefully on all these by next weekend, all being well, although I do have to get my Dux Bellorum bases done, as Salute ain't far away and I haven't even played a game yet!!!!

Like Father, Like Son...

Here's a few pics taken by my wife on Saturday shortly before a nasty accident involving the floor and the camera...ouch!

Here is my son Cameron, at 4 years 5 months old, about to play his first 'proper' wargame!! He has been fascinated by 'Daddy's soldiers' for a while, but things have really taken off since I started painting my Lord of the Rings stuff and since I went to see 'The Hobbit' - he saw the trailer on TV and was amazed - demanded to hear the story, what happened, who the people were, etc...

So I dragged out the One Rulebook (The Hobbit is a lovely rulebook, but some of the changes aren't too great, IMHO...monsters are now stupidly hard and I hate the warbands thing from a while back too) and we had 10 Elves plus a captain against 15 Orcs plus a captain.

Cameron took the Elves... We used the Saga measuring sticks as he can't use the measuring tape yet (ok, the 4" one isn't half the 6" one but who cares) and played til the Orcs' courage ran out.

He grasped the fight mechanics really well and really loved seeing Orcs die in droves!!!

Now all Cameron wants to do is play Lord of the Rings and my wife is in  despair, as she has two 'geeks' in the house!! :-)

Tune in in the next few days to hear of the latest Dux Britanniarum game - it has all gone very wrong for Praefectus Andrucius... :-(

LOTR Elves Painting Tutorial

Here's a step by step guide to the method I'm using with my LOTR models. I do use a mix of old and new GW paints and my usual Foundry stuff so apologies if it all gets a bit confusing!!

Once models have been cleaned & prepped, I undercoat them with white. Any areas of ring mail armour are then re-undercoated black to enable me to dry-brush it. Below, what the models look like once this is completed.

The next job is to drybrush the mail. This is undertaken with GW Boltgun metal, followed by GWIronbreaker. This gives the mail a darker appearance which I feel is more realistic, even for Elves.

Next, I tidy up the white undercoat where the drybrushing has affected it in readiness for the next phase. This is the application of basecoat colours to the entire model. I start with the flesh which is Foundry Flesh Light. The lower lip is painted with Foundry Flesh Shade. While it may sound daft to do the lips, actually, I find they make the face more expressive than doing eyes, as eyes can look ‘staring’ (at least, they do when I paint them!)

After the flesh, I paint the under-tunic (Foundry Arctic Grey Shade) The patterning is done with Foundry Stone and Arctic Grey. After that, the cloak is painted with Foundry Night Sky Light. Next, the hair is painted. The dark hair is painted with Foundry Peaty Brown Shade with a highlight of Peaty Brown Light. The darker blond is GW Bubonic Brown highlighted with Bleached Bone. The light blond is GW Bleached Bone highlighted with White. The highlights are applied before and after washing as I find this adds depth to the hair.

Next, the armour is done with GW Ironbreaker. After that, the black parts are painted and the  bow-grip is painted with GW Kommando Khaki. The pics below show a base-coated model. 

The key to this whole process is to be very neat and tidy. As you can see, even being neat and tidy, the model doesn’t look great, but you just have to move past that and apply the wash!

This is done by brushing on the Army Painter Strong Tone. This is done relatively sparingly. On NO account dip the model in as Army Painter recommend!! This causes hideous overkill and pooling, especially on models as fancy as these Elves!!

Once washed, they look like this…hideously glossy!!

However, that will all change at the highlight stage. IMPORTANT: Leave a full 24 hrs between the wash and the highlight, as it takes that long to fully dry.

This next stage is where the original basecoats are used to highlight up most of the colours with just a single highlight. The exceptions are the under-tunic, which also gets a second highlight of Foundry Arctic Grey and the patterning is highlighted with White. The black is highlighted with Foundry Charcoal and Charcoal Light. The armour gets an additional highlight of GW Runefang Steel (the new Mithril silver which is perfect for Elven armour as it is so shiny and bright). The hair is re-highlighted with the lightest shades above.  The cloak patterns are added at this stage. The blue pattern on rank and file is Foundry Storm Blue Light and on the Haldir model is Foundry Arctic Grey. This pattern is a lot easier to do than you’d expect. Pain the horizontal lines first. Then just add little ‘flicks’ between the lines criss-crossing over and over – keep it fairly random and you end up with what you see here…

This is what they look like now…looking better!

Next, the model needs matte laquer (the Dip is actually a gloss varnish). I use Testors Dullcote for this. In spring and summer I’d spray it on outside, but this won’t work in winter, so I brush it on. WARNING: this stuff is EXTREMELY toxic!! I do it in my office by an open window, wearing a mask and not doing any more than 6 models at a time!!

The models are nearly done now. All that remains is to re-highlight the very ends and edges of the armour with GW Runefang Steel to add a bit of ‘shine’. This is really good on Elf models as I feel they should be ‘bright and shiny’ on the armour front!!!

All that remains now is to base them. I do this by PVA-ing sand to the base. Once dry it is highlighted with Foundry Peaty Brown Shade and drybrushed with GW Bleached Bone. Then clump foliage and tufts are added. The clump foliage has flowers dotted on. On these models I have used Foundry Winestain Red Shade and Winestain Red Light, Yellow Shade and Yellow Light and Arctic Grey Shade and White. The base edge is done with GW Graveyard Earth.

The results are below…

Here is the full group in a scenic setting…

And that’s the method and colours I’ll use for my Elves. The method will be the same for the Orcs, but obviously they’ll be much less ‘prettified’ and will be darker in colour. If you like, I’ll do a similar step-by-step for a group of those at some point… 

I hope that this has been a useful tutorial in terms of seeing how I get to the finished article with the aid of the dreaded Dip!! Even with that, these models took ages...they are so hard to paint!!!! They do look cool though!!!